Swim for most people is just for recreational purposes, and is usually done in rivers, lakes, and ocean. As for the other as competitions event that held in the swimming pool, with a variety of styles like the breaststroke, backstroke, freestyle, and butterfly.
This water sport turned out according to historical records already begun centuries ago since prehistoric times, a period in which humans have not learned to write. The oldest evidence of the swimming activity was the paintings of swimmers from the Stone Age were found in "the cave of swimmers" that located adjacent with the Wadi Sora in the Gilf Kebir, southwest Egypt.
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| An ancient sketches of people swimming and doing their daily activities on the cave of swimmers. (Picture from: http://library.thinkquest.org/) |
The oldest record of the swim activities comes from 2000 BC. Some of the earliest references to swimming include the Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible, Beowulf, Quran and other sagas.
At 1538, Nikolaus Wynmann, a German professor of language wrote the first book about swimming activities with the title, "Der Schwimmer Oder die über ein Zwiegespräch Schwimmkunst" (The Swimmer or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming).
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| A sketch of the swimming sessions in the UK in 1615. (Picture from: http://myrealityandmyfantasy.blogspot.com/) |
After construction of the swimming pools in all Europe, in 1800 began the first swimming competition. At that time swimming competition only on breaststroke style.
In 1873, John Arthur Trudgen introduced the front crawl swimming style or called Trudgen style in in the Western world swimming competition. Trudgen style copied from the Native Americans freestyle swimming techniques.
In 1902 Richmond Cavill introduced the front crawl to the Western world. Butterfly was developed in the 1930s and was at first a variant of breaststroke, until it was accepted as a separate style in 1952.
At the 1896 Athens Olympics, swimming has entered as one of sport branch that competed. Then in 1908, formed the world swimming organization named Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA).
And now the sport has developed in such a way that it is able to make it as the fun activities with various kind of games. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | NET | GI | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 11042013]
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